


That Awkward Moment

by UntilDawnClimbingClass



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: First Kiss (kind of), Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Idiots in Love, Love Confession, M/M, awkward conversation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-23
Updated: 2017-11-23
Packaged: 2019-02-06 03:09:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,274
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12808320
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UntilDawnClimbingClass/pseuds/UntilDawnClimbingClass
Summary: Steve falls in a ditch while thinking about Jonathan and there’s only one person he calls to help him.





	That Awkward Moment

“ _I'm in a hole, can you come get me?”_

Steve looked up, squinting against the rich golden of the late afternoon sun, to see Jonathan silhouetted above him.

"Hey,” Steve waved, somewhat feebly, the limpness of his wrist seeming to be in direct correlation to the pounding of his heart.

"You called me and told me you were in a hole and you needed me to come get you.” Jonathan said, his voice rising in disbelief and making Steve wriggle restlessly against the loose dirt at his back. "And you're actually in a hole."

Steve looked around at the low pit he’d fallen into, and then back up at him, nodding.

"Yeah, well..." He shrugged. "That's what I said."

"I thought you meant some sort of deep, metaphorical hole, like you were upset or something." Jonathan crouched down.

“Oh, right, no. I was talking about this kind of hole. And a very shallow one, if I might add.”

"Seriously?" The younger man blew an exaggerated sigh through his lips. "I drove here as quick as I could thinking you were in some kind of trouble."

"Wouldn't you have come if you knew I was just, you know," Steve grabbed a handful each of dirt and let it sift through my fingers, "sitting in some kind of ditch thing?"

Jonathan considered this.

"I'd still have come," he said eventually. “So,” he held out a hand to Steve, “coming out?"

"Coming in?"

He eyed Steve’s current habitat, whilst Steve extended his hands out as if showing him around his house.

"Yeah, alright," he said after a moment, twisting sideways and then landing in the depression of earth beside him.

"Scoot over, then."

He gave Steve a light shove to make him shuffle over a bit so he had room. A silence fell into the hole, then, but not like it had only a little while ago when inattention and longing for his best friend had sent him sprawling.

"It got weird, didn't it?" Steve broke the silence as the last burnt rays of the sun sent dark shadows yawning across the lawn around them.

Jonathan didn't pretend not to know what he was talking about.

"It did," he agreed.

The older boy hung my head, heavy with a sadness of his own making. "I'm sorry."

Jonathan made a brief, dismissive noise with his tongue. "Not your fault."

Very kind of him to say so, but thoroughly inaccurate.

"Yes it was!" Steve exclaimed, unimpressed with his attempt to give him such an easy out. "I was the one who kissed you."

"Yeah." Jonathan suddenly smiled. "Guess it is your fault, then."

There was was his boy.

"Okay, but you were the one who ran away." The teasing was familiar, it was them, but Steve held his breath to see whether such a bold finger pointed at Jonathan’s actions was too much too soon. He had been avoiding Steve for two weeks, after all.

"I didn't run away," the other boy objected and Steve snorted loudly.

"You ran like your ass was on fire.”

"I didn’t…That’s not what happened.”

His shoulders tensed and Steve could tell he was one comment away from losing his pit buddy.

"Sure, fine," he relented. "Why did you do such a manly sprint in the opposite direction of me, then?"

Jonathan shifted uneasily and picked up a pebble, tossing it back and forth between his hands before lobbing it out of their cosy space and across the garden.

"Because," he eventually managed to bring himself to grunt, "I knew it was going to get weird."

"Weirder than this?"

Steve’s voice was incredulous and they both took a moment to survey their current situation.

Yeah. They were literally sitting in a hole.

"Point taken."

"So…” Steve didn’t know what to say and he let his voice trail off awkwardly.

“Look, Steve, I know I dropped off the edge of the earth and I'm sorry about that. I’ve just  been busy, work's been-"

“That’s bullshit,” Steve said to him to with a groan. “You haven't found the time to check in in two weeks? A quick ' _hey, I'm still alive and I don’t hate your guts,’_ would’ve got me through alright."

"I didn't know what to say," Jonathan rebutted. "And it's not like you called me, either,

Okay, he had a point. Steve had probably been avoiding him just as much as Jonathan had been avoiding _him_.

"I didn't know what to say," Steve admitted, copying his excuse.

Jonathan was quiet for a moment. Then he said, “I don’t want it to be weird.”

Steve floundered for a moment, trying to find something noteworthy to say in response, but ending up just declaring, "Me either."

"I left my job early and drove in the opposite direction to home in peak hour just to sit in a hole with you," his friend said, all in a rush then, staring fixedly out across the yard.

Steve felt myself curl up, like the slaters in the exposed soil around them. “Sorry," Steve muttered making him look down at him in surprise.

“No, that wasn't a dig," Jonathan said quickly, pun presumably unintended. "I meant that it's a good deal. I'd do it every day of my life if you asked me to. And that's, you know, that's something…"

It was. No denying that.

"So it's just the…ah…the kissing that you have a problem with?" Steve asked hesitantly, bracing himself for a suddenly flurry of movement as Jonathan leapt out of their hole and ran for his life.

Steve prepared myself for nothing, it turned out, as he realized Jonathan wasn't making a break for it, he was still sitting next to him and…was he…? Yes, he was. He was blushing.

"No, that's…yeah…that's not a problem."

"So what is?"

"I like sitting being here you," Jonathan said gruffly. "And what if…you know…us wanting to kiss ruins everything?”

"Man, you have no idea…I’m so in love with you."

The words were out before he could stop them, but, really, how could he not say it? "So there you go.” Jonathan gaped at him, the dictionary definition of stunned. “Everything is already weird. Your move."

"Oh." The younger boy seemed to mull this over, the muscles in his neck leaping as thinking it through appeared to take an actual physical toll. "In that case…"

And then his hand was cupping Steve’s chin and he was tilting his face up to press his lips to his; the touch feather-light, the reaction coursing through Steve’s body more like a freight train.

Steve closed his eyes and leant into him…okay, more like fell, and Jonathan reached for him in return, lifting him up onto his lap with a surety that trumped any of his previous hesitation.

Their kiss deepened and Steve curled into him; tasting him, touching him, dragging him to him and binding them together until Steve was dizzy with the power of it all.

Or, that could have been the lack of oxygen.

They pulled back, gasping, and Steve realised that the sun had well and truly gone down and that they were now two people sitting in a hole…in the dark.

There was nowhere else they would rather have been.

"Hey," Jonathan muttered as Steve tucked my head down against his chest, drawing in deep gulps of air as he recovered from the kiss of a lifetime. "We kissed and the world didn’t end. Maybe we should take that as a good sign...right?”

Steve smiled, though Jonathan couldn’t see. “Maybe We should try it again—just to be sure.”


End file.
